English Essay
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1SecretariatGirl
Hey guys...this is my first major paper for my college English class. If you get a sec will you tell me what you think?
Reflected Horrors
Frankenstein has been the ultimate horror story for ages. A young scientist brings life to the lifeless and in turn brings horrific death to those he loves. Frankenstein in itself is a deep, intriguing story but what makes it even more fascinating is that it was written by a teenage girl, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Since the publication of Frankenstein readers have wondered how such a gruesome story could come from the mind of such a young girl. Mary tried to give an answer to this question in the introduction to the 1831 version of the story but it mostly deals with how she came to write it not why. While on holiday with her soon to be husband, Percy Shelley, and another famous poet, Lord Byron, a challenge is proposed. They are to each write a ghost story. While the men come up with tales (mostly in poem form and not very scary) fairly quickly, Mary struggles to come up with an idea. She is obsessed with creating a story worthy of the title “ghost story”. Finally the idea for Frankenstein comes to her in a dream. I believe Mary’s obsessive desire to produce such a truly horrendous tale, was a way for her to come to grips with her life.
Mary’s stories were not intended to please an audience; they were intended for her alone. As a child Mary would daydream and craft stories in her mind. “My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed—my dearest pleasure when free.” She recalls in Frankenstein’s introduction. Frankenstein wasn’t meant to appeal to her readers either. As she said, “This is for myself; my readers have nothing to do with these associations.” The tale was written under the guises of a challenge, but it was intended as a reflection of Mary’s feelings. It was meant for her and her alone.
Frankenstein was a mirror of all the horrors and hurts Mary had experienced in her young life. The story was written when she was only in her late teens and yet she’d already experienced more pain and suffering than many people experience in a lifetime. These experiences flow through the ghastly and sinister plot and characters of Frankenstein. Her experiences, the hurt she felt, they were all very openly put into Frankenstein.
Mary was constantly struggling with abandonment issues. Her mother died just days after her birth and Mary’s father, Mr. Wollstonecraft, hired a nurse to look after Mary and her older half sister, Fanny (Mary’s mother’s love child). The nurse loved and cared for Mary and her sister like a mother, but Mary’s father did not approve of the man the nurse was seeing, so she left the Wollstonecraft household before Mary was five.
Mary longed for a close relationship with her father but he blamed her for the death of Mary Wollstonecraft Sr. He re-married when his daughter was still very young and the attentions of his new wife opened an even bigger gap in an already strained relationship. Mary’s new step-mother brought to the Wollstonecraft family her daughter, Jane--who was just a bit younger than Mary--and another son. Jane and the new step-mother were a constant source of angst for Mary. The step-mother claimed all of Mr. Wollstonecraft’s time and attention and Jane was a constant annoyance. By age eight Mary was dealing with a very broken family. Two half siblings (William was born after Mr. Wollstonecraft and the step-mother were married), two step-siblings, a stepmother who didn’t like Mary and a father who blamed his daughter for the death of his beloved wife. Mary was, in a sense, the ‘red-headed step-child’.
At age sixteen, Mary fell in love with Percy Shelley. He was a poet and scholar who ran in her father’s circles. Percy was an older man of twenty one who was already married to a woman named Harriet. Mary’s father forbid her to see Percy so when they ran away together, she lost all coveted ties with him. At the time she wrote Frankenstein, Percy was still married to Harriet. Mary had also just lost her and Percy’s first child, a baby girl. Just before the novel was written Harriet, who was also with child, drowned herself in a river and only then did Mary and Percy marry.
At the time she wrote Frankenstein Mary was dealing with the grief of her lost child, the grief of the suicide of her half sister, the guilt of Harriet’s suicide (for it was most likely her fault) and the lost relationship with her father. Percy was very disappointed that the lost child had been a daughter and offered Mary no comfort in her time of grief. He had also had a brief affair with Mary’s step sister, Jane, who accompanied the pair when they ran away. Percy was constantly pestering Mary to write and when she finally did write Frankenstein, he convinced her to make it much longer than the few pages originally planned. Mary, although very in love with Percy, must have felt resentment towards him and her situation. It seems quite fitting that the name ‘Mary’ means sorrows. Mary had faced, and was still going through, horrors, hurts and struggles untold. Frankenstein was a mirror of all that.
Another factor that must have influenced Mary’s feelings, and in turn influenced Frankenstein, was her surroundings while writing. At age eighteen, she was on holiday in a castle in Scotland. The weather had started out pleasant, but quickly turned bad forcing the eclectic group inside for the remainder of their stay. A dark, dreary castle in cold, bad weather must have made for a depressing scene. In addition to that, her company was Lord Byron, Percy and Byron’s physician Polodori. Although Mary had been raised in an intellectual environment, the debates and discussions must have often times grown boring or confusing. The environment must have given Mary much time (whether consciously or unconsciously) to dwell on her situation. Her lover to whom she was not married and his wife, the loss of her first child, the relationship between her and her father, the long ago death of her mother, her step sister and her problems (she was carrying Lord Byron’s child)—it must have been a very dreary time. When Byron suggested the challenge, Mary must have seen it as a break from her disturbing thoughts and the long, intellectual discussions when, in fact, it turned out to be an outlet for all of that.
Mary was obsessed with writing the perfect ghost story. She wanted to create something terrifying and truly horrible. This is abnormal for a young female and especially a young female in that time period. Mary’s background, however, lends a lot to this fixation. Her father and Percy both were infatuated with death. Mary spent much time with both of them in graveyards and had, in fact, learned to write her name by tracing the name on her mother’s gravestone. The combination of this and her twisted background must have given her a keen fascination with the brokenness of others lives, even if the lives she was fascinated with were those of her own creation and in turn had all the elements of her own life.
In writing Frankenstein Mary was able to take all of her hurt, confusion and emotions and turn them into a living thing. Even in her introduction, Mary was not able to show the world what was really going on in her heart. Through the plot and characters, Mary was able to turn her hurt into a living thing. Whether she realized it or not Mary used the writing of Frankenstein as a kind of therapy to help her come to terms with her past, herself and her situation. Her obsessive desire, she describes in her introduction, to come up with the perfect ghost story was a desire to find a way to let her life come out. She needed to craft a story that portrayed the horrors of her own life. “What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which haunted my midnight pillow.” In the end of Frankenstein the monster kills its creator. We can only hope that we do not allow the living thing our hurts become to kill us.
Reflected Horrors
Frankenstein has been the ultimate horror story for ages. A young scientist brings life to the lifeless and in turn brings horrific death to those he loves. Frankenstein in itself is a deep, intriguing story but what makes it even more fascinating is that it was written by a teenage girl, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Since the publication of Frankenstein readers have wondered how such a gruesome story could come from the mind of such a young girl. Mary tried to give an answer to this question in the introduction to the 1831 version of the story but it mostly deals with how she came to write it not why. While on holiday with her soon to be husband, Percy Shelley, and another famous poet, Lord Byron, a challenge is proposed. They are to each write a ghost story. While the men come up with tales (mostly in poem form and not very scary) fairly quickly, Mary struggles to come up with an idea. She is obsessed with creating a story worthy of the title “ghost story”. Finally the idea for Frankenstein comes to her in a dream. I believe Mary’s obsessive desire to produce such a truly horrendous tale, was a way for her to come to grips with her life.
Mary’s stories were not intended to please an audience; they were intended for her alone. As a child Mary would daydream and craft stories in her mind. “My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed—my dearest pleasure when free.” She recalls in Frankenstein’s introduction. Frankenstein wasn’t meant to appeal to her readers either. As she said, “This is for myself; my readers have nothing to do with these associations.” The tale was written under the guises of a challenge, but it was intended as a reflection of Mary’s feelings. It was meant for her and her alone.
Frankenstein was a mirror of all the horrors and hurts Mary had experienced in her young life. The story was written when she was only in her late teens and yet she’d already experienced more pain and suffering than many people experience in a lifetime. These experiences flow through the ghastly and sinister plot and characters of Frankenstein. Her experiences, the hurt she felt, they were all very openly put into Frankenstein.
Mary was constantly struggling with abandonment issues. Her mother died just days after her birth and Mary’s father, Mr. Wollstonecraft, hired a nurse to look after Mary and her older half sister, Fanny (Mary’s mother’s love child). The nurse loved and cared for Mary and her sister like a mother, but Mary’s father did not approve of the man the nurse was seeing, so she left the Wollstonecraft household before Mary was five.
Mary longed for a close relationship with her father but he blamed her for the death of Mary Wollstonecraft Sr. He re-married when his daughter was still very young and the attentions of his new wife opened an even bigger gap in an already strained relationship. Mary’s new step-mother brought to the Wollstonecraft family her daughter, Jane--who was just a bit younger than Mary--and another son. Jane and the new step-mother were a constant source of angst for Mary. The step-mother claimed all of Mr. Wollstonecraft’s time and attention and Jane was a constant annoyance. By age eight Mary was dealing with a very broken family. Two half siblings (William was born after Mr. Wollstonecraft and the step-mother were married), two step-siblings, a stepmother who didn’t like Mary and a father who blamed his daughter for the death of his beloved wife. Mary was, in a sense, the ‘red-headed step-child’.
At age sixteen, Mary fell in love with Percy Shelley. He was a poet and scholar who ran in her father’s circles. Percy was an older man of twenty one who was already married to a woman named Harriet. Mary’s father forbid her to see Percy so when they ran away together, she lost all coveted ties with him. At the time she wrote Frankenstein, Percy was still married to Harriet. Mary had also just lost her and Percy’s first child, a baby girl. Just before the novel was written Harriet, who was also with child, drowned herself in a river and only then did Mary and Percy marry.
At the time she wrote Frankenstein Mary was dealing with the grief of her lost child, the grief of the suicide of her half sister, the guilt of Harriet’s suicide (for it was most likely her fault) and the lost relationship with her father. Percy was very disappointed that the lost child had been a daughter and offered Mary no comfort in her time of grief. He had also had a brief affair with Mary’s step sister, Jane, who accompanied the pair when they ran away. Percy was constantly pestering Mary to write and when she finally did write Frankenstein, he convinced her to make it much longer than the few pages originally planned. Mary, although very in love with Percy, must have felt resentment towards him and her situation. It seems quite fitting that the name ‘Mary’ means sorrows. Mary had faced, and was still going through, horrors, hurts and struggles untold. Frankenstein was a mirror of all that.
Another factor that must have influenced Mary’s feelings, and in turn influenced Frankenstein, was her surroundings while writing. At age eighteen, she was on holiday in a castle in Scotland. The weather had started out pleasant, but quickly turned bad forcing the eclectic group inside for the remainder of their stay. A dark, dreary castle in cold, bad weather must have made for a depressing scene. In addition to that, her company was Lord Byron, Percy and Byron’s physician Polodori. Although Mary had been raised in an intellectual environment, the debates and discussions must have often times grown boring or confusing. The environment must have given Mary much time (whether consciously or unconsciously) to dwell on her situation. Her lover to whom she was not married and his wife, the loss of her first child, the relationship between her and her father, the long ago death of her mother, her step sister and her problems (she was carrying Lord Byron’s child)—it must have been a very dreary time. When Byron suggested the challenge, Mary must have seen it as a break from her disturbing thoughts and the long, intellectual discussions when, in fact, it turned out to be an outlet for all of that.
Mary was obsessed with writing the perfect ghost story. She wanted to create something terrifying and truly horrible. This is abnormal for a young female and especially a young female in that time period. Mary’s background, however, lends a lot to this fixation. Her father and Percy both were infatuated with death. Mary spent much time with both of them in graveyards and had, in fact, learned to write her name by tracing the name on her mother’s gravestone. The combination of this and her twisted background must have given her a keen fascination with the brokenness of others lives, even if the lives she was fascinated with were those of her own creation and in turn had all the elements of her own life.
In writing Frankenstein Mary was able to take all of her hurt, confusion and emotions and turn them into a living thing. Even in her introduction, Mary was not able to show the world what was really going on in her heart. Through the plot and characters, Mary was able to turn her hurt into a living thing. Whether she realized it or not Mary used the writing of Frankenstein as a kind of therapy to help her come to terms with her past, herself and her situation. Her obsessive desire, she describes in her introduction, to come up with the perfect ghost story was a desire to find a way to let her life come out. She needed to craft a story that portrayed the horrors of her own life. “What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which haunted my midnight pillow.” In the end of Frankenstein the monster kills its creator. We can only hope that we do not allow the living thing our hurts become to kill us.
2VetaTorres
well written
check punctuation ( i think you made need commas in a few spots) oh and idk if parentheses are ok to use in rhetorical writing...
overall it seems good. though for your thesis you might not want to use "I believe" because it makes it an opinion rather than an interpretation.
check punctuation ( i think you made need commas in a few spots) oh and idk if parentheses are ok to use in rhetorical writing...
overall it seems good. though for your thesis you might not want to use "I believe" because it makes it an opinion rather than an interpretation.
3SecretariatGirl
Muchas Gracias!
I'm getting the paper back Monday...hoping for an A!
I'm getting the paper back Monday...hoping for an A!
5SecretariatGirl
I got a 90 which is an A!!! I did better than anybody in my group!
7jettblack28
kool i like getting good grades
9SecretariatGirl
Get grades? I hate not getting grades!!! I like seeing how I did!
10jettblack28
i got my reprt card today! lowest C =( . only first grading per. tho
11ragulto101
I got my second Progress Report for this semester(they added another one that only comes out on the 1st semester) and 3 OF MY GRADES WENT DOWN!!!!
I mean it's still an A BUT it went down.....I was trying to make it go UP!
Great Job on your essay SecretariatGirl!
I mean it's still an A BUT it went down.....I was trying to make it go UP!
Great Job on your essay SecretariatGirl!
12SecretariatGirl
I get so flipped out if I get anything lower than an A!
13jettblack28
under B is when i start getting angry... mabey C....
i LOVE getting straight A's!!!
i LOVE getting straight A's!!!
14VetaTorres
i love getting A's but once i hit Algebra 2 i just hoped i passed which i did thankfully, i don't get so mad at myself if i don't get a good grade, i just try harder the next time. this yr though i have over 100% in Government and Psychology. Yay!
15nele95
i got like 4 b's and my mom said that if i don't get them up by the big report card i am in troble because i want to go to medical school so i need to get like straight A's
16VetaTorres
dude ur like in jr high right? that won't even matter for college... they look at 10th and 11th grade
17jettblack28
ill have to go to med school to... if i wanna be a vet. *sigh* it takes so much (school) to be a vet!
18nele95
yeah but if i get a c- in any of my classes because of this coursre i am in i have to stay after.
And you should always care about your grades.
And middle school we dont't have jh out here
And you should always care about your grades.
And middle school we dont't have jh out here
19jettblack28
it doesnt really matter. we all no what she was talking about
21VetaTorres
obviously u should care about your grades but when you start going crazy about having a B instead of an A that's a bit ridiculous. i mean in college no one cares as long as you passed the class. once you get your diploma no one cares what you got on your report card.
so what i meant was that you shouldn't be panicing about getting a B you still have high school
so what i meant was that you shouldn't be panicing about getting a B you still have high school
23VetaTorres
then why the heck is there a problem, and that's alright i've gotten used to it.
25jettblack28
everyone is rude sometimes, some more than others.
27jettblack28
i dont remember saying that.
28VetaTorres
when you say "i'm not trying to be rude" means you are being rude, but your not trying. you say things in definite fact, as if there aren't alternatives, which can be narrowminded... not that there's anything wrong with that, everyone's entitled to act as they wish, which is why i said i'm used to "it".
29SecretariatGirl
I don't think anyone was being rude...
30jettblack28
why has this turned ito a main conversation? its like WHO REALLY CARES! we are all human here.
31VetaTorres
its true but i'm just pointing out the fact above, and that's exactly why i said people can act and say what they want.
32jettblack28
who has another subject we can talk about without making anyone annoyed?
33VetaTorres
if you are so annoyed, come up with a new topic
34SecretariatGirl
Snowcones, disgusting flaored ice or good??? JK, whatever you guys wanna talk about...
35jettblack28
i like them.... but there are some better sweets in the world.
37jettblack28
(=O
39jettblack28
thats it ur coming to my house this, /next, summer.
41SecretariatGirl
Snowcones are best made with real snow!
42jettblack28
thats what i heard but it has to be really clean, like just snowed clean for me to eat it.
44jettblack28
thats disgusting
45VetaTorres
good lord! that's nasty
46jettblack28
but true, im sure my brother hasnt never peed in the snow.
47SecretariatGirl
Dogs pee in the snow too but you can find clean stuff!!! Especially in your own yard. Try making them w/ rootbeer...they rock!!!
48jettblack28
i have a dog... so i dont think ill eat snow ever again!
50jettblack28
i guess i can say im a germaphobe...
52jettblack28
YES!
54jettblack28
...
56jettblack28
....wwoooowww...
58jettblack28
nvm.
